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Barefoot Notes: Wood-watching

Every time I go on a
walk – anywhere I go on a walk – if I happen upon a dead or a decaying tree –
standing or fallen – I pause a minute or two and look. I look for the peeling
bark revealing patterns underneath it, at burrows and pinholes into the
sapwood, and pathways carved unto the cambium. I look at the texture of the
trunk, the hardened sinewy cellulose-muscles running the length of the
heartwood. Trick is to not just see but peer into the tree; at the mineshafts
and alleyways carved by dwarvish insects and unassuming fungi.

Wood-watching is not
exactly like tree-spotting where you observe a living tree. It, too, whether
the tree is small or big, takes its own time; the colours and the warts, the
creases and crevasses on the cork, gashes on boles, and natural protrusions,
all represent a visible record of the tree, after all, leaves are only
temporary, and roots invisible. Loggers have their own way of identifying a
tree fit to be felled. Botanists often look at the trunk as they look at leaves
and flowers to put a name on the tree. On the other hand, wood-watching is
quite difficult to describe. Roughly speaking, it is akin to map reading, but
it is also like deciphering a historic record.

Dead trees intrigue
me. Not that I rejoice in the death of a tree. But the death of a tree, if it
is natural, is a rare example of a beautiful death. Just as it lived its life,
wholesome and complete, so it does in its death. And if you, too, take a moment
of your time to wood-watch, you will be stumped as I first was.

Trees die in many,
many ways. Every tree expires differently as does every species. As their time
wanes, some become more susceptible for diseases and invasions by insects and
fungi. Some silently shed their leaves which never sprout again. Some strip
their bark to reveal their sapwood or hardwood. Some collapse, some rot away
quickly or extremely slowly, while some stand as tombstones in their death, just
as gracefully as they did in leaf.

Every tree that dies
deserves lamentation. And to spend a few minutes gazing at a dead tree is
nothing short of a tribute to a life that only gave. Look closer, and you will
see in death the tree is still giving. Giving aplenty. To the microscopic fungi
that spurt wooden mushrooms, to the cellulose-digesting termites that nibble
away at its phloem, to the industrious woodpeckers that make colonies in its
heartwood. In its death, it lives on.

Yet not every tree,
once it assumes its post-life identity, retains the exact same quality. You may
see a dead tree stump full of bracket or wood-ear mushroom, while another in
the same grove to be absent of any traces of surface fungus. You may see one
with an active ant colony – which rely on the wood purely for dwelling – and
another with termites that chew away at the wood. Sometimes, you may see
engraver beetle (popularly called ghoon
in India) galleries right under the cork, or a colony of millipedes, woodlice,
and springtails turning cork into pulp, or spiders and geckos camouflaged
against the bark, preying on unsuspecting wood-munchers. Sometimes you may
notice sword-wielding wasps surgically inserting their ovipositors deep inside
the tree, targeting wood-boring beetle grubs, or, even more rarely, xylophagous
– or wood-eating – flies sparring upon its surface. If that happens, two
minutes multiply into twenty.

All these organisms
are on the tree for a reason. All of them linked to one another in more ways than
just being in the same place, making it an ecosystem in itself. A Scolytine
beetle (like Ambrosia) makes galleries in the wood to encourage the
growth of a particular symbiotic fungus (in case of Ambrosia, the ambrosia fungus) that, in turn, slowly decomposes the wood as
it grows while the beetle consumes it. Some termites abandon the tree once the
cambium is depleted, leaving behind tunnels which are then occupied by ants,
also allowing fungi to get to the insides of the tree to accelerate degradation.
Some wasps specifically target wood-boring beetle grubs in their wooden lairs,
setting the fungus free to spread even faster. On the outside, it gives back
the canopy it once occupied, creating a niche estate for the saplings that race
to capture the new property; in its grave the growth is rich in biomass as the
former resident gives away the nutrients it obtained from its ancestors, thanks
to the very many wood artisans it recruits in its death.

You will, however,
never see all these things together. It largely depends upon the properties of
the wood – particularly sapwood and especially heartwood that requires special
qualities to be broken down. It also depends on the time of the year, the age
of the tree, the time since it has been dead, the moisture in the air, even on
the tree’s immediate surrounding. And this makes wood-watching as interesting
as any other form of indulgence in nature. Like birdwatching, it is a life-long
activity. It is a form of remembering the dead that are barely noticed, if at
all.